JIMMY HARPER'S OPERATIONS MANAGER BLOG : Service Monitor SQL Cluster

SQL Server Full Text Search Service Monitor

jimmyharper — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:41:00 GMT

This issue is described in the SQL Server Management Pack Guide, but I wanted to blog it since I’ve seen a couple customers hit it.

In the current version of the SQL Server Management Pack (version 6.0.6559.0), we have a monitor for the SQL Server Full Text Search Service which is targeted at the SQL 2005/2008 DB Engine classes.

The problem is, this is an optional component in SQL Server and is not always installed. So, for servers where this service is not installed, we will see a lot of the following alerts:

Alert Name:

Service Check Probe Module Failed Execution

Service Check Data Source Module Failed Execution

Alert Description:

Error getting state of service Error: 0x8007007b Details: The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect. One or more workflows were affected by this. Workflow name: Microsoft.SQLServer.2005.DBEngine.FullTextSearchServiceMonitor Instance name: MSSQLSERVER Instance ID: {625091EA-A1D9-1857-802C-0D908C93A5BB} Management group: jimmyh_mg1

To fix this, all we need to do is disable this monitor on any SQL Server that does not have the Full Text Search Service installed. The easiest way to do this is to create a group for all of the SQL Instances that do not have the service installed. The Full Text Search Service name is one of the discovered properties for the DB Engine class and will be blank if the service is not installed:

To create a group of SQL instances that do not have it installed, we can just use the criteria “Does not match regular expression . (dot)”, like this:

Then, just set an “Enabled=False” override on the monitor, targeted at this group:

Repeat the same steps to create the group and override for SQL 2008 DB Engines.

One more thing that you’ll want to do with this monitor is set the “Alert only if startup type is automatic” override to False for clustered SQL Instances…..since the service will always be in a Manual startup mode.

To do this, I create a group of Cluster SQL Instances where Full Text Search Service IS Installed:

And target the override at this group:

Again, repeat for SQL 2008 DB Engines.

Attached is a sample MP that contains the above groups and overrides for SQL 2005 DB Engines.

UPDATED:

I've removed the original attachment and attached a .zip file that contains these MPs for both SQL 2005 and SQL 2008.

No Alert from SQL MP when clustered services go down

jimmyharper — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 04:16:00 GMT

I recently ran into the following issue:

The SQL Server Management Pack has several monitors to monitor various SQL Services:

However, on a SQL Cluster, if one of these services is taken offline:

We don't get an alert from SQL (we do get a cluster alert saying that a cluster is offline), and the monitor stays healthy:

This happens because:

By default, a Basic Service Monitor will only monitor services whose startup type is Automatic
On a Clustered SQL instance, the service startup type will be set to Manual

To fix this, you simply need to set the "Alert only if startup type is automatic" override to "False" for the Clustered SQL Instances

Now, the health state is changed when the service is down and we are properly alerted:

NOTES:

The SQL Monitors affected by this are:

Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.DBEngine.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.ReportingServices.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.AnalysisServices.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.IntegrationServices.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.DBEngine.FullTextSearchServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2008.Agent.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2005.DBEngine.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2005.ReportingServices.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2005.AnalysisServices.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2005.IntegrationServices.ServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2005.DBEngine.FullTextSearchServiceMonitor
Microsoft.SQLServer.2005.Agent.ServiceMonitor

You must have at least version 6.0.6441.0 of the SQL Server Management Pack for this to work. The latest version is 6.0.6460.0 and can be downloaded here.
If you manually create a Basic Service Monitor in the OpsMgr console, the "Alert only if startup type is automatic" override will not work. You'll need to export the MP and edit the XML to add <CheckStartupType>true</CheckStartupType> to the monitor configuration (this is already done in the latest SQL MP):

Before change (not working):

<ComputerName>$Target/Property[Type="Windows!Microsoft.Windows.Computer"]/NetworkNam
e$</ComputerName>
<ServiceName>Messenger</ServiceName>
</Configuration>
</UnitMonitor>

After change (working):

<ComputerName>$Target/Property[Type="Windows!Microsoft.Windows.Computer"]/NetworkNam
e$</ComputerName>
<ServiceName>Messenger</ServiceName>
<CheckStartupType>true</CheckStartupType>
</Configuration>
</UnitMonitor>